The present invention relates generally to electronic devices such as information processing equipment, and more particularly to an electronic device that has a mechanism for protecting electronic components. The present invention is suitable, for example, for protection of an LSI mounted on a motherboard in a notebook personal computer ("PC").
Notebook PCs are required to efficiently radiate the heat generated from high-performance electronic components. They are also required to have a rigid body housing in order to protect electronic components such as a CPU from an impact and torsion that are applied to the body.
Accordingly, a conventional notebook PC has enhanced rigidity using a thick body housing, and is provided with a heat-radiative plate in contact with or in the neighborhood of the electronic components. A motherboard mounted with these electronic components is fixed on the housing's bottom surface through a spacer, and spaced from the surface by a predetermined distance. Accordingly, the electronic components are supposed to be protected from contacting and/or colliding with top and bottom surfaces of the housing even when the housing bends. A plurality of spacers is generally mounted around the motherboard (or printed circuit board) to allow installation of the electronic components on the motherboard. The conventional electronic component has not contacted the housing's top and bottom surfaces, because the maximum flexure amount of the bent housing was smaller than the distance between the electronic component and the housing.
However, the more recent thin-body boom that the notebook PCs are inevitably required to seek has thinned the housing width (in a height direction) and shortened the spacer length. In addition, the aspect ratio in the housing is not so different from the conventional one because the longitudinal and lateral lengths of the housing should match a size of a display to be mounted thereon. As a result, the electronic components mounted on the motherboard have become closer to the housing's top and bottom surfaces, beyond the housing's flexure amount, and the electronic components have come into contact and/or collide with the housing's top and/or bottom surfaces directly or through the radiative plate, often getting damaged.
For example, a conventional structure shown in FIG. 3, that fixes motherboard 202 on bottom surface 214 of the housing 210 through spacer 208 would cause electronic components 204 mounted on the front side of the motherboard 202 itself through the electronic components 204. Then, the electronic components 206 mounted on the rear side of the motherboard 202 come into contact and/or collide with the bottom surface 214 of the housing 210, often getting damaged. These problems would possibly occur when the housing 210 is twisted.
In addition, the conventional structure show in FIG. 3 cannot remove the vibration external to the housing, and the vibration often damages the electronic components. Such vibration frequency occurs especially in the PC having a keyboard. The conventional structure that provides a radiative plate between a motherboard and housing's top surface prevents the housing from becoming thinner and lighter due to the thickness and weight of the radiative plate.